


Something Better than Heaven

by Kaerith



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: First Meetings, M/M, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29003475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaerith/pseuds/Kaerith
Summary: Nicolò closed his eyes and prayed, his breath caught painfully in his throat as his heart seemed to have moved there. Perhaps the shorter distance from his heart to his lips to God might makethisprayer, unlike the thousands that had come before it, actuallywork.He lost himself in the prayer. It was not entirely an intercession on this man’s behalf; this Muslim had said words that unlocked something Nicolò had been keeping caged inside.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25
Collections: All and More (18+) Kaysanova Gift Bag 2020





	Something Better than Heaven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss_Nixy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Nixy/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [Miss_Nixy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Nixy/pseuds/Miss_Nixy) in the [All_and_More_Gift_Bag_2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/All_and_More_Gift_Bag_2020) collection. 



Nicolò was tired of the desert sun. The air was dry, his mouth was dry, the ground had been dry before he and this Muslim man had each watered it with their lifeblood a dozen times over. It was draining and Nicolò was exhausted. Resurrection, it seemed, did not restore strength to muscles nor saliva to desiccated tissues. 

One more stab to the infidel’s gut and he crumpled again to the earth, the terrain soaking up more blood while Nicolò watched almost enviously. He staggered backwards before collapsing, happy his enemy wasn’t aware to watch his sword tangle with his legs. 

He was going to appreciate this respite. His head was baking in his helm and chain mail hood so he shoved them off, closing his eyes to the glare of sunlight and wishing for even the faintest of breezes to cool the perspiration from his skin. 

“So the monster does have a face.” 

The raspy voice incited Nicolò to open his eyes and turn his head, but his body was unlikely to gain impetus to move any of his heavy limbs. The Muslim was alive again and spoke in a traders’ patois not completely indecipherable to Nicolò’s ear. He, too, looked drained and immovable. 

“Yes,” Nicolò replied, succinctly and dryly— in all definitions of the word. His tongue ripped from his palate like it had been glued there. “But you appear to be a monster of the same ilk as I. How have you cursed me with your condition?” 

The man’s face was still mostly obscured by beard and head coverings, but a grimace and slow movement conveyed his disagreement. “I had always considered myself a normal man. This... healing is new.” He groped at the slashed remnants of his raiment, palpating his torso curiously. “Is it not something familiar to your people?” 

“Only in tales of demons and witchcraft.” Nicolò spoke with venom. 

His enemy collapsed back onto the ground. “You Christians,” he said on an exhale. “Always overlooking and scorning the plain gifts and praying for your silly miracles.” 

“What is that supposed to mean?!” 

The Muslim man rested an arm over his eyes. “Fucking,” he said, seemingly for no reason. The coarse term made Nicolò turn away to hide his blush. The man had probably erred with his word tense. It was simply meant to be an execration. 

“Ah, see? You flinch from the mere concept of sex. I doubt you have ever given yourself to a woman— or a man— to be satiated. Found ecstasy in a lover’s arms and discovered a completeness that no words sent up to your Heaven while on your knees has ever provided.” 

Nicolò could not miss the tease in the infidel’s voice. He curled his fingers around the hilt of his sword, silently promising to kill the dog again soon as his legs regained strength. 

“Allah created men and women to experience pleasure. Shouldn’t reveling in it be an exercise in faith? Your leaders chain you with this thinking of pleasure as wickedness.” His free hand lifted and flapped as he continued: “When pleasure becomes something shameful, common men must do as they are told and put their energies into more productive efforts. Tilling and killing and doing selfless acts of penance and devotion.” 

He finally fell silent and Nicolò digested this speech and sullenly fumed. The temerity of this apostate! To lecture a priest on his own faith! 

“True rewards await the good and faithful in Heaven,” he finally said, telling himself that he doesn’t care if this uneducated heathen understands his words. He tries to stop himself from waiting for some verdict from the man, another argument in this spontaneous and unexpected discourse. Nicolò is actually (awfully) curious however, and he is afraid this is another way in which he fails at being the perfect Servant of the Lord his superiors had always found him unworthy of being. 

“It is a comfort of a thought,” the enemy said. “I am sure that made dying the slightest bit easier for all of your men in their last moment.” He gestured to the battlefield of corpses the two of them had strayed from. It was galling to Nicolò that this warrior sounded sympathetic; it even sounded like honest regret rather than an enemy’s condescension. “But do you think that none of them wished with their last thought they had said ‘fuck off’ to their masters when they were told to come here to be slaughterers and corpses? Ah,” he gusted out a massive exhale. “Is there no profit you can ken of _why_ your rich and powerful leaders enforce your religion on everyone under their control? Or why the people you keep trying to ‘save’ resist your altruistic efforts?” 

Nicolò scrambled to his feet to threaten the man with his blade. “You will not tempt me to stray from my Path!” His sword shifted as his knees jolted as he fell to the ground, and Nicolò was horrified as he inadvertently sliced halfway through his neck. The Muslim remained serene even as his airway bubbled and spurted with blood. His lips, flecked with scarlet droplets as he gasped, moved with soundless words. 

Nicolò felt all the panic that the Muslim soldier should have been experiencing as he waited to see whether the man would live or die. It was irrational after all the countless deaths they have inflicted upon each other, but Nicolò didn’t want _this_ to be the one that…. He could not abide the thought that his enemy would finally, truly die over his own fumbling mistake. 

He let his sword drop and put his hands on either side of the wound, pushing it together, trying to encourage it to heal before the light left the man’s eyes… this close, Nicolò would be able to see it happen, and he thought that the eyes of this enemy would haunt his nightmares more than any of the others he had killed in The Lord’s Name. 

Perspiration dripped from Nicolò’s face onto the man gasping in his shadow, but he could feel the flesh knitting. Nicolò closed his eyes and prayed, his own breath caught painfully in his throat as his heart seemed to have moved there. Perhaps the shorter distance from his heart to his lips to God might make _this_ prayer, unlike the thousands that had come before it, actually _work._

He lost himself in the prayer. It was not entirely an intercession on this man’s behalf; this Muslim had said words that unlocked something Nicolò had been keeping caged inside. 

The touch to his wrist made him open his eyes to meet those of the other. The soldier did not look afraid or angry; his gaze was questioning and kind. Nicolò thought it best to remove his hands, but the gentle grasp of the man’s hand on his own bare skin persisted; it was perhaps the only benevolent touch Nicolò had felt since leaving his mother’s arms back in Genova to embark on this Crusade to save his soul along with others’. 

He did not know what to say to this kindness. 

“I figured… I assumed you were praying,” Nicolò said, feeling ignorant and embarrassed. “I do not know your prayers, so I used mine. I’m, I’m sorry if that offends you.” 

The man shook his head a bit and struggled to sit up. Nicolò aided him, knowing from much experience by now that strength did not return swiftly from a death or a healing. Once he was seated, he removed his head coverings and the sodden throat-wrap. Beads of sweat glistened in his hair and the man’s skin practically glowed. He was a black-and-brown marvel; a spectrum of colors meant for the golds and beiges of the desert, not a burnt and reddened stranger to these lands. In such close proximity, in such a calm moment, Nicolò could only see the beauty The Creator’s Hand had in making this alien empire and its inhabitants. 

“I did not pray.” 

The man’s words tore through Nicolò’s reverie and he averted his face, ashamed to have been caught staring so. 

“What other words could have been so important to say while facing death?” Every one of Nicolò’s deaths had been with the Lord’s name on his lips: prayers for succor, praise, mercy, and revenge. 

“I would have liked to know your name at last, even if it should have been my final _final_ breath taken on this world.” His answer was unexpected. 

Nicolò’s mind could not conceive of any importance his own name should have to this man, except— “You may take my name to wherever you go after,” he said firmly. “Tell your god or your ancestors that Nicolò di Genova was the one to attempt to slay you so ignorantly and fruitlessly.” 

The man chuckled. “Hardly _fruitlessly,”_ he said. “Just… incompletely? Never mind.” He met Nicolò’s gaze again, still with no trace of hostility. “It is easier to see you as a person without your face covered. I didn’t want to die without knowing what name belonged to the handsome man I had been fighting with for so long.” 

“Ah? Oh... yes.” He blushed, looked away. Earlier, Nicolò’s thoughts had fluttered away from the kernel of truth of _why_ he had been so distraught by this last, accidental, potential fatality he had inflicted. This enemy, this man, was, also, _handsome_. He had insinuated that Nicolò could find a _man_ to… to… to _sin_ with! The casual— and even suggestive— manner with which he added that option hinted that he would… maybe even _had_...! And here this stranger was, with his unfathomably kind eyes and delightful smile with an edge of wickedness and temptation, so close and bare-faced and exposed, so that Nicolò could no longer think of him as a faceless enemy to cut down again and again. 

Worst of all was how everything the man said made sense! Every critical jab against Christianity and its leaders— Nicolò had felt that, before, for his entire adulthood but had never dared put that suspicion into words. After all, there had never been another acceptable option than following the Church. One could not turn one’s back to all of society without being exiled or persecuted. 

“Nicolò di Genova,” the Muslim repeated, his name sounding like something exotic, valuable, _valued_ on his tongue. “I am Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani.” He smiled, pink lips curling to expose alabaster teeth. “Yusuf al-Kaysani, if that would make it easier for you to remember.” 

Knowing the man’s name was worse; the combination of intimacies (hair, face, eyes, grin, names) made Nicolò’s loins heat and spasm, the flames of wicked lust heating from his hips to his ears. Yusuf clearly noticed the effect their proximity and shared confidences was having on him. His eyes danced quickly from Nicolò’s eyes to his ears to his mouth, and his own smile softened. 

“Can we cease being enemies?” Yusuf said. 

Nicoló’s mind stuttered, and the stammering carried over to his voice. “Y-yes. I think we, we already have.” He wanted to see Yusuf gaze at him with approval, and the man granted him that desire: the corners of his eyes crinkling endearingly as his smile widened and warmed. Yusuf gave him even more: a hand gently cupping his face and pulling Nicolò’s chin to give him a kiss of friendship. Nicolò was new at this, and clumsy, but he hoped that his kiss in return offered Yusuf that same friendship as well as his apologies. Everything Nicolò was and had to give him and _more_ ; his future, which he hoped would be bound to this surprisingly gracious and generous man. 

He left his shield behind. Abandoned his articles of faith and everything that had held him to a life that had never fit _him_ instead of the other way ‘round like he had always thought. Yusuf’s offered hand promised something better than even the afterlife that he had never been certain was going to be his anyway.


End file.
